'Photography versus the pest': Shell chemicals, mass media and pesticides in post-war Britain

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• Max Long (History, University of Cambridge)
• Monday 13 March 2023, 13:00-14:00
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Silvia M. Marchiori.

This paper explores the intersections between industrial agriculture, mass media, and extraction by examining colour photographs and films produced by the oil and chemicals corporation Royal Dutch Shell in post-Second World War Britain. In the 1940s, new potent organochloride pesticides entered the agricultural market, promising to revolutionise productivity. Many of these were made from byproducts of oil refining, and were manufactured by oil companies like Shell. To market these new products, Shell spared no expense in the production of glossy photographs and vivid films intended to help farmers to ‘visualise’ the pests that threatened their crops. These images often drew on the expertise of natural history photographers and filmmakers, who had finessed techniques of visualising insects and other pests over the preceding decades. This paper offers a detailed examination of Shell’s marketing in the 1950s and early 1960s and its use of scientific images.

This talk is part of the Cabinet of Natural History series.

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